Thursday 1 April 2004 10.27 EST
First published on Thursday 1 April 2004 10.27 EST

The prime minister,
Tony Blair, rejected suggestions that the home secretary, David Blunkett, should also resign and he praised the way in which Ms Hughes had conducted herself.

"I think she has shown a great deal of courage. She could have waited for it all to have been given out at the inquiry and then strung it out for weeks. She didn't," he said.

"She came to me very honestly yesterday evening and said 'I don't think that I can continue because I think that the answers that I have given in these interviews, having looked at the correspondence, are inconsistent with that'."

Mr Blair denied that Ms Hughes had been overwhelmed by her workload as immigration minister but admitted that there had been problems.

"What is clear here is that something has been going on that shouldn't have been going on," he said.

The home secretary, David Blunkett, said: "Although she's not lied, she's not incompetent, she's done nothing wrong, she does feel she may have mislead people over an answer on Newsnight. She feels she didn't answer as honestly as she would have wished.

"It's a measure of this woman that she's willing to step down on that basis.

"She acted upon the letter, authorised action on the report, did not recall it on Monday morning, and felt that her integrity mattered her and the government that she resigned.

"I'm very sad."

Mr Blunkett added: "I have absolute, remain having absolute, confidence in her and she did a fantastically competent job in halving asylum, in actually doubling the number of removals, in transforming the decision-making.

"It is so sad that, not on asylum, but on this related immigration issue, she should have been on a late-night interview and been asked a question that she feels she did not answer as honestly as she would have wished."

The Tory leader, Michael Howard, said the immigration system was in "chaos".

"This is a government that has let the country down on one of its most important responsibilities, which is the control of our frontiers and the control of immigration.

"It is quite clear from what has happened over the last month that the government's policy on immigration is in chaos.

"And what we need in this country is a government that will get a grip on this problem and that will stand up for the people of this country and make sure that we have proper immigration rules that are firm but fair.

"That is what we need. That is what we haven't got at the moment."

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy backed Tory calls for an independent inquiry into the visa row, which ultimately cost Ms Hughes her job but said he did not think David Blunkett should also go over the affair.

Speaking on Sky News, he said:"I don't think we have got to that stage by any means. But the big and important signal he must send is that he is aware of the seriousness of the issue itself."

"If we want proper informed debate, it has got to be in a background of public confidence in the operation of the public service itself - if we're not informed, then we descend into the lurid and unhelpful headlines which have become a hallmark of this issue."

The shadow home secretary, David Davis, said Ms Hughes's resignation was an admission that the immigration system was in crisis.

Mr Davis, who has repeatedly demanded the minister should quit, added: "Why has it taken so long and why did the government not tell the truth from the start?

"Her resignation will not solve the crisis, nor will more gimmicks from Downing Street, such as the prime minister taking personal control of yet another area of policy.

"What is needed now is a proper, full independent investigation into this crisis, which will report urgently. It must be established without delay."

The Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, warned that Ms Hughes's resignation would not end the controversy over immigration.

He told Sky News: "I remain convinced that the only way that we can settle this is not with a ministerial resignation but a full, proper, independent inquiry.

"The home secretary should move this morning to do that."

Steve Moxon, the Home Office whistleblower whose allegations about the handling of east European immigration triggered the row said he felt vindicated by Beverley Hughes's resignation.

Arriving at a disciplinary hearing with Home Office officials in Sheffield today, Mr Moxon said the resignation had taken him by complete surprise.

He said: "I can't understand why she went to all the trouble of defending herself only to resign.

"I need to take stock and deal with this when it all calms down.

"What I said was just the tip of the iceberg and she is responsible because she has been at best incompetent.

"I have had to be careful how I have gone about this. I have not taken any money from any source.

"I feel vindicated today but I wonder who is going to take the job now. You talk of a poisoned chalice but this is more like a tanker full of cyanide.

"It was worth putting my job on the line. I don't have a very well paid job and the pressure was intolerable."

Keith Best, chief executive of the independent Immigration Advisory Service, said: "I'm sorry for the minister but I think it was inevitable because ministers have lost control of the Immigration and Nationality Department.

"Senior civil servants feel disempowered because they are seeing frequent and flawed pieces of legislation brought forward which are initiated by policy gurus rather than themselves.

"Ministers have concentrated far too much on legislation and then on blaming lawyers and asylum seekers, rather than on making sure their own department works in an effective and efficient way.

"I fear that unless they take urgent measures then Beverley Hughes' successor will have the same problem."

The chief executive of the Refugee Council, Maeve Sherlock, said: "We are sorry to hear of Beverley Hughes' resignation.

"We recognise the contribution she has made in her role as immigration minister to improving some of the Home Office systems.

"Although we sometimes disagreed on approach, we feel she shared our commitment to having a system that helps refugees in fear of their lives and deals effectively with those who have been fairly rejected.

"One of the lessons of this episode, and indeed of recent years, is that it is very difficult to have a sensible debate on immigration and asylum when the political temperature is at boiling point.

"We are only going to get the right solutions if we have a public debate concentrating on the real problems of the system.

"This requires political leadership not just from government but from all parties."

The Scottish National party leader in Westminster, Alex Salmond, said: "Beverley Hughes' position was shaky when it emerged that she was written to by a junior Home Office Minister a year ago pointing out the defective procedures over immigration from Romania and Bulgaria - which she acknowledged at the time.

"But the final question for Tony Blair on this debacle is a very obvious one. If apparently inadvertently misleading people on immigration matters in television interviews is a resignation matter - as it was in this case - then how much more should Blair's misleading of parliament and the people over weapons of mass destruction and Iraq cost him his job?

Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian society, said: "What lies behind this is the fact that immigration and asylum are becoming quite a dangerous electoral issue for Labour.

"They need to show they have a grip on the system, given that there is an increasing panic about it in the media.

"The danger for the government is that they need to be seen to be taking public concern seriously. Unfortunately their actions on asylum and immigration do seem to be stoking up the media debate, rather than calming it down.

"What's getting lost are the important messages they need to put out about the economic benefits of immigration, and of European enlargement in particular."

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of right-wing immigration pressure group MigrationWatch UK, said: "This is not a failure by Ms Hughes, it is a failure of government policy.

"The government have triggered a massive level of immigration which is stimulating further pressure on the system.

"They cannot manage the inward flow, nor remove people who have no right to remain here.

"We have now virtually lost control of our borders. We need not a new minister but a new policy."

Richard Gowan from the Foreign Policy Centre thinktank said:

"Beverley Hughes' fall is trivial politics. The government has consistently bent to the tabloids rather than put up an effective case in favour of economic migration.

"Ministers have too often been silent about their largely progressive policies on the ground."

Geraldine Smith, the Labour MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, the constituency where 20 Chinese cocklepickers died earlier this year, said today that Ms Hughes had paid the price for a lack of transparency in her department.

Speaking on Sky News, she said: "It isn't about competence, it was about transparency in the department. I think it was about no clear policy on immigration.

"You have got to carry your staff and the general public with you and I think there was a certain lack of confidence around immigration policy, so I think we have got to look at that and see how we can do better in the future."